Stafford A. Griffith named interim Pro-Vice Chancellor of UWI’s 5-Islands campus

The University of the West Indies (The UWI) has appointed Stafford A Griffith as interim pro-vice chancellor and principal of its 5 Islands Campus located in St. John’s, Antigua & Barbuda with effect from August 15, 2019 until July 31, 2020.

Griffith will lead the campus for its initial year of operation, which is expected to welcome its first cohort of students in September. Established to provide a development platform for Antigua & Barbuda, the new 5 Islands Campus will also function as a hub for the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and serve to expand the institution’s regional capacity in the delivery of higher education for the 21st century.

It will begin with 3 schools – the School of Health and Behavioral Sciences; the School of Management, Sciences and Technology; and the School of Humanities and Education.

Approval of the regional university’s newest campus was recently announced by Vice Chancellor Hilary Beckles.

Griffith previously served as regional director of the university’s Office of Online Learning (OOL) since October 2017, director of The UWI’s School of Education, and deputy dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the Mona Campus in Jamaica from August 2012 to September 2017.

He has also spent more than 35 years of his career at the professional and senior management levels in fields covering educational measurement and evaluation, programme planning and management, curriculum development, and teaching.

The holder of a professorial chair in research, measurement and evaluation, Professor Griffith’s postgraduate qualifications consist of specialised study in research, measurement, and evaluation, and curriculum development.

He also holds an LLB degree and has completed graduate studies in the areas of political science and development studies.

In addition to academia, Griffith’s career spans multiple roles, among them: director of the USAID-funded Caribbean Center of Excellence for Teacher Training (CCETT) headquartered at the Mona Campus; pro-registrar of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), having previously served the council as assistant registrar as well as head of a project unit; consultant/national coordinator of a World Bank and Ministry of Education Reform of Secondary Education (ROSE) Project, Jamaica; director of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and The UWI Institutional Strengthening Project; and senior education project manager of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Regional Development Office/Caribbean.

He has also served as a resource person in a number of regional and national curriculum development, teacher training, and measurement and evaluation activities, and as a consultant to a number of regional and international institutions and organizations, including the Ministry of Education (Guyana), the University of Guyana, the Caribbean Examinations Council, the Norman Manley Law School (Jamaica), the Eugene Dupuch Law School (The Bahamas), the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation, TECSULT International Limited (Montreal) and the Van Leer Foundation (Holland).

His research and publications include at least 90 items comprising journal articles, scientific/scholarly papers, technical reports, book and book chapters, and monographs in areas related to various aspects of education, including innovations in education, educational reforms, educational measurement and evaluation, and online learning.

His book on School-Based Assessment in a Caribbean Public Examination (UWI Press) received the Principal’s Research Award in 2016 for Best Research Publication (book category) in the Faculty of Humanities and Education at The UWI Mona Campus. -(CMC)